Threads of Fate
by RaineDay2000
Summary: Zephyr. Leanne. Vashyron. An unusual trio of hunters. Three people who cheated death. A series of vignettes.
1. The Beginning

a/n: Meant to be a series of loosely connected one-shots about the characters in _Resonance of Fate_. Too long to be drabbles, but not supposed to be a chaptered story either. Don't go looking for a plot; there isn't one. Rated "M" in case it needs to be.

**

* * *

Threads of Fate: The Beginning**

"Let me get this straight," Vashyron said slowly. "**You** brought a **girl **home."

Scowling, Zephyr refused to meet his eyes.

"Not me. You." Feeling he needed still more clarification, Vashyron added, "**Here**."

"She didn't have any where else to go, okay?" muttered Zephyr.

"This isn't a hotel or a charity, Zephyr."

"Maybe she can cook or clean or something."

_Or something,_ thought Vashyron with a smirk. The kid was sixteen, so it was about time his hormones kicked in. The sort of woman who would follow a teenaged boy home, however, gave him pause. It was probably the sort of woman **he'd** picked up on a routine basis, back before he had the kid on the premises cramping his style. "And here I thought I was the one always getting yelled at for being sexist."

"She's kinda in shock," Zephyr said. He was still in _mutter _mode; it was a little hard to understand him. "She tried to kill herself."

Vashyron's amusement vanished. "You brought some unstable broad here? Where we have guns laying around?"

Zephyr just **looked **at him. His sullen expression spoke volumes.

Yeah, the kid was probably right; neither of them were models of stability.

Sighing, Vashyron asked, "Where is she?"

"Spare room."

The "spare room" was a storage area, with an old closet filled with miscellanea and the world's mustiest mattress. Even if she was (as Vashyron suspected) a prostitute looking for a place to crash for a few days, it wasn't a nice place to put a woman.

Then again, this was a bachelor pad. It wasn't supposed to be a "nice place."

Standing up from the sofa, Vashyron strode to the closed back door. He rapped once before shoving the door open. He didn't see her at first, just her dress, a splash of white against the dark bedding. Her pale fingers were folded in her lap, pressed so tightly together he could see the indentations against her flesh. Her head was bent forward, long dark hair obscuring her features.

_Skinny as hell. Probably a drug addict, then._

Raising her head, she gave him a wide-eyed glance. Vashyron was taken aback. From the way Zephyr was acting, that curious blend of resentful and protective, Vashyron had a feeling she was playing the _delicate_ card. But she really _did_ appear delicate, all haunted eyes and pale skin stretched too tightly across her face.

She also didn't appear any older than Zephyr. Vashyron's mouth tightened. He had been a soldier, he'd seen horrors, but there were few things more terrible than coming face-to-face with a child prostitute and realizing just how evil people really could be. The rough words he meant to speak, along the lines of _one meal and you're back out, y'hear_?, died unspoken in his throat. "Hey," he said instead.

Her gaze returned to her hands, haunted eyes once more hidden behind a fall of dark hair. "Hello."

Soft voice, high-pitched with youth, was she _younger_ than Zephyr? Vashyron leaned one shoulder against the door, trying to make himself smaller in an attempt to go from _intimidating_ to _unassuming._ "My roomie says you're looking for a place to stay."

"Well – not exactly. I just didn't have any place else to go."

_That's what _Zephyr _said. _Vashyron tried to think of any recent epidemics, along the lines of the one that wiped out Pateropolis. Those eyes had the look of someone who had survived something terrible. "He also said you tried to kill yourself."

The shadows on the back of her hands deepened as her fingertips dug in. Then she murmured again, "Not exactly."

"You _accidentally_ tried to kill yourself? Suicide's a pretty purposeful act, usually."

"It wasn't—" she paused to consider her words before speaking, a hint of steel underlying her tone when she continued. "I wanted control over my own destiny. That's all."

For the barest instant he was back in Lucia, helpless against he-didn't-know-what as everyone fell around him. He blinked, and the strange girl came back into focus, sitting primly on the dusty mattress in their spare room.

Well, it _was_ a spare room. And it wasn't like a slip of a thing like her would take up that much space.

"I don't suppose you can cook," said Vashyron.

She glanced up again, looking a little startled. "Um … I don't know. I've never tried."

Straightening up from his slouch in the doorway, Vashyron grinned at her. "Time for some new experiences, then."


	2. Girl Stuff

**Threads of Fate: Girl Stuff**

* * *

"_Why_ are we here again?"

It came out as a snarl. Zephyr reflectively hunched his shoulders. It hadn't sounded quite so biting in his head.

Vashyron smirked. The older man had a hip hitched against the boutique's counter, casually flirting with the sales clerk as they waited for Leanne. "You brought a girl home, Zephyr."

"So?"

"So, she needs girl stuff. Unless you want her to wear your clothes? Hate to break it to you, but she's taller than you. Most of your stuff won't fit her."

"I'll get taller," growled Zephyr. He clenched his jaw against saying anything else. Did he always sound so angry?

Well, he _was_ angry. Every time he took in a breath, it was a reminder of those who no longer breathed…

"Perhaps you two should update your wardrobe as well," suggested the clerk. "You're both always so dark and gloomy. It must be depressing for your new roommate to be around such dreary colors all the time." She gazed up at Vashyron through her lashes, a sly, teasing look. "There are some new jackets in the 'Night' line. I'm sure they would be simply _dashing_ on you, Vashyron."

_Simpering jackass,_ thought Zephyr viciously. He wasn't sure which of the two he meant.

Vashyron gave a theatrical sigh, pushing away from the counter. "C'mon, Zephyr. That last job paid well. Might as well blow it looking nice for the ladies." A smirk crossed the older man's face. "Or looking nice for the _lady_, as the case may be."

"_Stupid_," Zephyr grumbled under his breath. Vashyron chuckled at him before crossing the shop to sort through a rack of denim jackets. Irritated, Zephyr scowled at a clothing display without seeing it, wanting to be just about anywhere else in Basel than in a moronic boutique full of overpriced fancy clothes.

"Um," said a voice next to him.

He pivoted sharply, ready to pull his gun. Leanne stood nearby, appearing unsure as she gazed at him. "Are you sure this is okay?" she asked, hesitant. "It's a lot of clothes."

He gawked at her, not knowing what to say. Her hair was a different color than it had been, blond instead of dark, pulled back from her face. Her arms were full of shirts and skirts. The nearly shapeless dress she had been wearing when she jumped had been replaced with a gold top that clung to her trim figure and a flared olive skirt that displayed a generous length of leg. She fidgeted under his stare, dropping her gaze uncertainly.

"Yeah, yeah, that's fine," said Vashyron without looking up from the jackets he was studying. "We all need some new threads. Zephyr is getting something, too, aren't you, Zephyr?"

"Uh, sure." Zephyr reached blindly into the clothing display and pulled out the first thing that came to hand. "I was thinking about this," he said, then did a double take and winced. _This_ was a purple and cream shirt with an abstract design, far more garish than his usual subdued hues. Bandits and gangsters would see him coming from miles away wearing this thing.

"Oh, that's nice," Leanne said with a smile that lit up her eyes. "Are you getting it?"

Zephyr stared at the shirt in his hand, then at the riot of colors spilling over her arms, then at the hopeful smile on the girl's face. Maybe he wore a little _too_ much black. "Yeah, I'm getting it."

It took an effort, but he managed to ignore the snickering that came from the general direction of the denim jackets.


	3. Job Description

**Threads of Fate: Job Description**

* * *

"What do you two do?"

Mug halfway to his mouth, Vashyron paused before taking a sip of coffee. "'Do'?" he queried.

"Yes, _do_. Neither of you have regular hours, you vanished an entire day and night last week and left me with Zephyr—"

"Zephyr."

"What?" growled Zephyr.

"You behaved yourself around the lady, right?"

"What? What does that even—? What! Of _course_ I behaved myself!"

Vashyron hid a grin by taking another sip of coffee. It was too easy, sometimes.

Leanne continued, "You wear guns. Are you policemen? Soldiers?"

"Policemen and soldiers have regular hours, most of the time," Vashyron pointed out. "We're between jobs at the moment."

She looked puzzled. "You always seem to have money but you don't have jobs—?"

Zephyr interrupted her artless prattling. "We're hunters."

"Hunters?" If anything, Leanne appeared more puzzled. "You hunt animals? Do you sell the meat?"

She didn't know what a hunter was.

Vashyron put the mug down on the low table in front of the sofa, leaned back, and studied his new roommate thoughtfully. Over the past two weeks, he found what she didn't know to be as interesting as what she did know. Leanne was well educated yet had never seen a television set. Evidently where ever she came from was impervious to all forms of popular culture. She had devoured what few books they possessed, most of which were adventure novels belonging to Zephyr. The lurid stories amazed her. It took some effort to convince her they were fiction rather than literal retellings of historical events. She claimed to be twenty (that had been a surprise; he'd been twenty when he left the military, hard-bitten and cold) yet reacted to everything around the town with surprised naiveté as if she had never seen shops or street gremlins before. Vashyron's early (admitted ill-informed) opinion of her had been revised. Everything about her proclaimed _privileged upbringing_. While that didn't preclude her from being a drug addict or a prostitute, nothing in her behavior over the past two weeks bore out his initial suspicions. Addicts took on the personality of their addiction. Whores developed a thick skin that came with living off the streets. Vashyron couldn't think of a single drug that made someone sweet and curious, nor could he imagine a prostitute shrieking in surprise when someone walked into the bathroom to find her elbow-deep in the sink washing out her unmentionables.

She'd apologized profusely for overreacting, but Zephyr bore the imprint of her hand for the rest of the day like a badge of honor.

Vashyron thought it most likely that Leanne was the runaway daughter of a noble house in Chandelier, except no job looking for wayward offspring had showed up on the mission board. He'd checked every day since she first came to live with them.

"I suppose the term for us in polite society would be 'mercenaries,'" Vashyron told her. "The Cardinals hire us to weed out anyone they deem a threat to society. Merchants hire us to exterminate local monster outbreaks. Sometimes what we're paid to do is pretty trivial, sometimes it's life threatening, sometimes it's downright shady. All depends on what day of the week it is. Today," he picked up the mug again, "it's 'hang-around-the-house-and-eat-the-fantastic-breakfast-Leanne-cooked-for-us' day."

"What _that_ means is the only jobs posted needed a Core 2 pass," said Zephyr dryly. "I don't have one, and Vashyron didn't feel like going by himself."

Vashyron waved one hand airily. "Day off won't kill us!"

"But a day working might?" Leanne's question had the ring of rhetorical about it. She was thoughtful rather than surprised or shocked. Although she had not heard the term _hunter_ before, Vashyron was sure she had worked out the gist of what they did for a living already. Her next query, however, surprised him. "Could you teach me to use a gun?"

"Hell, no!" sputtered Zephyr. The boy had carefully tracked down and locked up every weapon they possessed. He didn't even want to let Leanne use the kitchen knives for fear she might turn one on herself.

"Not so fast, Zephyr." While Vashyron understood Zephyr's concern, the boy's protectiveness bordered on cloying. Just as she didn't have the manner of an addict or a prostitute, Leanne didn't behave like someone who was actively suicidal. "Why do you want to learn to shoot, Leanne?"

"Self-defense?" she offered after a moment's consideration.

"A gun is pretty iffy in the _defense_ department. It can easily be taken away and used on you."

"I feel like a burden. I need to earn my keep. I want to be useful to you guys." Her voice had that steel undertone again, the one that contradicted her fragile appearance. "I could help you with your work."

The look of horror on Zephyr's face was priceless. "You _are_ useful!" he protested. "You cook and … and stuff!"

"I read recipes and follow the instructions. Anyone could do that."

The two males, who had both failed miserably in the _following the instructions_ part of their own cooking endeavors, wisely didn't comment. "I admit, there are some jobs that would go more easily with another person," mused Vashyron.

Zephyr objected. "You are _not_ serious!"

"Why not? Tell you what, Leanne. I'll take you out to the practice field near the arena, and let you try your hand at shooting. If you're still interested after that, I'll train you. Just one rule, though. No shooting yourself." Vashyron looked her straight in the eyes. "You decide you want to die, let one of us do it. We're professionals. We know how to kill someone cleanly."

There was a sound of half-smothered protest from Zephyr. The girl, however, was made of sterner stuff. "I understand," said Leanne. "I have no intention of dying, I assure you."

"This is a messy business," Vashyron told her. "People die. It isn't pretty."

There was another long pause before she spoke again. "Some people deserve to die. I'm fine with that."

_Some don't, but die anyway,_ Vashyron thought. He didn't say that out loud.


	4. Soft

**Threads of Fate: Soft**

* * *

Their day of target practice produced surprises for everyone.

Although Leanne knew what guns were, evidently she had never witnessed one being discharged. Vashyron spent an hour going over safety protocols, lulling the girl into a false sense of complacency. The echoing retort after Vashyron demonstrated the proper way to shoot startled her into a small scream. She covered her mouth with her hands, flushing in self-conscious embarrassment. Chuckling, Vashyron handed her the pistol. It was the smallest caliber they had, stripped of all accessories, yet she held it as if the weight were almost too much for her slender hands.

Vashyron had trained recruits in Cardinal Victor's army, so he was prepared for her shock at the physicality involved in shooting a handgun. Civilians assumed shooting was a simple point-and-click procedure. A person firing a gun for the first time was often surprised by the kickback as the bullet left the chamber. The recruits, however, had already been through hand-to-hand combat training and were in prime physical condition. Leanne's first attempt at firing the weapon made her cringe and recoil in pain. She only just held onto the gun.

She had barely finished flinching before Zephyr snatched the pistol away from her. Sizing her wrist, he forced her hand palm-up. "Are you hurt?" he demanded, brushing two fingers across her bruised palm. A startled expression crossed his face. He stroked the center of her hand again. "Soft," he murmured.

_Gloves,_ reflected Vashyron as he inserted himself between the two of them, calling a halt for the day (and, incidentally of course, forcing Zephyr to let go of Leanne's hand). _We need to get gloves for her. Shoulda thought of that._

He also wondered if anyone in that strait-laced seminary gave the teenaged boys incarcerated there "the talk." Hell, he wondered if anyone from where ever Leanne came from gave _her_ "the talk." If not, he supposed it was _his_ responsibility.

He pictured the scene, the two of them on the couch while he stood in front of them lecturing (with appropriate diagrams where necessary), imagining Zephyr's face becoming more closed and sullen while Leanne looked wide-eyed and curious. Somehow it morphed into an angry Zephyr (and _God_, Vashyron knew what an angry Zephyr was like) covering Leanne's eyes with one hand while the other pointed the largest caliber handgun they possessed right at him.

It was lucky, Vashyron decided, that he was the best at everything he did, including ducking any responsibilities he didn't feel like taking on.


	5. Cute

**Threads of Fate: Cute**

* * *

Because Vashyron had a job, Zephyr took over training Leanne for a day. Nothing extraordinary happened at the practice range until near the end of the session. He demonstrated a running attack, ending it with a twisting somersault meant to both throw off the enemy and allow his weapon an extra fraction of a second to charge. When he skidded to a halt in front of Leanne she applauded, beaming like a child at the circus. Zephyr was, of course, too cool to simply accept her appreciation. Instead he cast his gaze down as he muttered one of his usual trash-talk phrases. "I've gotta get out of this rut."

Vashyron hadn't explained the concept of _trash talk_ and its place in battle to Leanne yet. She took the comment literally, face falling as she apologized for wasting his time with her meager skills. Appalled, Zephyr hastened to assure her that he didn't mean _she _was the cause of his rut.

It was an even bigger mistake. Leanne, Zephyr discovered, was someone who, when faced with a problem, tackled it immediately. If one of her roommates felt like he was in a rut, she was going to make sure said _rut_ didn't last the day.

When Vashyron walked into their flat after finishing his mission, he took one look at the fuming Zephyr and snickered.

Then he chuckled.

Then he out-and-out guffawed.

Zephyr growled, "Don't. Even. Start."

"Aw, but you look so _cute!"_

"I. Do not. Look _cute_."

Placing a hand against his hip, Vashyron canted his head to the side and studied the younger male, appearing to give the matter serious thought. His quirked lips belayed his solemn expression. "Well, maybe 'cute' _is_ the wrong word. You look _something_, that's for sure."

Scowling, Zephyr tilted his head forward, meaning to use his usual trick of hiding his expression behind his long bangs. Red filled his vision, reminding him of _why_ he was in such a bad mood.

"Y'know, you're going to have to learn to say 'no,'" Vashyron told him. Zephyr shot a sardonic look from under his _not-cute_ red bangs at Vashyron's teal-blue jacket, so different from the black he routinely donned before they had a fashion-conscious female in the house. Smirking, Vashyron raised his hands as if forestalling criticism. "Clothes are one thing, but she's treating you like a dress-up doll. Remember the sunglasses?"

_They match your jacket_ was all she needed to say for Zephyr to don the eyewear. He had actually _liked_ the way the sunglasses looked on him. Unfortunately Basel's irregular day/night cycle made them impractical. The only thing worse than having darkness abruptly fall in the middle of a firefight was wearing dark lenses that compounded the effect. Zephyr flung the glasses off to better see the enemy. When the battle was over, all he could salvage was part of an earpiece.

When he explained what happened to her gift, Leanne insisted she understood. Zephyr still felt bad about it.

Perhaps that was why he gave in so easily today. When she dragged the red-and-black shirt from the rack and asked him to try it on, he did. And when she exclaimed over the new red spray-in hair dye and how it was the same deep burgundy as the shirt, he submitted to that as well.

Which was why he was now contemplating hiding in his room for the next two weeks. The dye was spray-in, but it wasn't wash out. According to the instructions, two weeks was the minimum amount of time it would take for the vivid red to wear off.

"What's it going to be next?" asked Vashyron, although the question had the ring of rhetorical about it. "New eye color every day? Holsters that match your pants?"

"Don't be ridiculous," grumbled Zephyr.

"I don't have to be, when _you're_ playing the part so well."

Zephyr considered the merits of extreme violence against the older man for all of five seconds. "I upset her," he finally admitted. Since he refused to make eye contact, it appeared as if he was talking to the floor. "Over something _stupid._"

One corner of Vasyron's mouth ticked up. "Ah," he said, as if he understood perfectly. "That's a valuable life lesson learned. Upsetting a woman is _serious_ business."

Exhaling strongly enough to blow strands of his (red) bangs around, Zephyr could only agree.


End file.
